I also visited a few of the standard stops on the tour that nearly all foreign journalists must take: the Saddam Hussein Childrens Hospital; the Hotel Rachid with its famous entrance mosaic of George Bush Sr.s face which everyone who enters or exits the hotel must walk over; the Amiriya bomb shelter, now a memorial to the 400 civilians who were incinerated when two American missiles seeking Saddam Hussein penetrated the shelters reinforced roof; and the Baghdad flea market which has boomed since the Gulf War

as Iraqis sell household items for extra income and buy items they can no longer find or afford to buy new.

Everyone I spoke to, including the foreign head of the WHO in Iraq as well as Iraqi doctors and health ministers, cited studies and statistics and seemed genuinely convinced that depleted uranium was linked to the very real augmentation of cancers and congenital anomalies in Iraq.